Chronicles of Selfishness
by Nonakani
Summary: /Billy/Penny later, T for safety/ Despite their short-comings, they really did try their best. Past, present, and future are meaningless; Three tales in which inexplicably strange things happen to the precious status quo. /Act II - Captain Hammer/
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. Any similarities with the real world are purely coincidental. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

* * *

**Act I**

**Dr. Horrible (Wishes and Goals)**

-

-

_(They had been the same person, once. Even after he found his calling, that little voice of malevolence that drove him forward, there had never been any need to differentiate between the two. After all, the mask of Dr. Horrible was merely a disguise.)_

_-_

Billy awoke feeling as though he had been crushed by weights.

He groaned, his body aching, and shifted slightly in the bed that felt much larger than it should. It was softer than he remembered, too: the lump of bricks called a bed that he slept on every night was not nearly this comfortable, not nearly this clean.

At last, he cracked his eyes open and, seeing barely through his loosened goggles the lab equipment that literally overflowed from all corners of the room – beakers and wires and cases upon cases of circuitry – he believed that nothing was wrong. Maybe he just felt small this morning. The bed sheets that remained untwisted by use reminded him of his long night of work previously; maybe today just wouldn't be his day, and is body could already feel it somehow.

Finally deciding to wake up, his hand groped his way up to his goggles which, even though the shape felt wrong and the material seemed more sooth than before, he pushed up to his forehead where they rested comfortably. The room was bright – sunlight shone through a single crack between the blinds over his window, hitting the exact spot where his eyes were in a thin line. Of course.

Flailing about, he finally managed to right himself and stand up, though he had to lean against the bed-knob at first. In his half-awakened state, his suit felt constricting; at that moment, he wished that he had changed in to his pajamas the night before. Eyes almost closed, a strange combination of his sleepiness and the habit he had of squinting his eyes, everything spun disorientingly around him as he moved. It took a good minute to make it to the wall attached to the bathroom door.

Oh, wait. He opened his eyes just a bit; the bathroom door was on the other side of the room. Talk about an off morning.

He couldn't remember having ever felt so exhausted from just staying up late to work on an experiment. Even the Trans-Matter Ray, with all of the kinks its first prototype had had, didn't result in such exhaustion. Thus, when he at last got to the bathroom and pulled himself in to the septically sterile space, his sleeplessly delirious mind could only make a single word out of his jumbled reactions to the world around him: toothbrush.

Order. Cleanliness. His world needed at least that much, despite what he wanted to believe: Billy needed the status quo, even if his mission as Dr. Horrible was to destroy it.

And thus Billy watched as his status quo was suddenly shattered.

The first thing he noticed, when he looked in the bathroom mirror, was not his bright red coat. Sure, it made him look far more evil than its white counterpart had, and the black gloves matched in a morbid sort of fashion. Nor was it the sleeker, more refined goggles that still sat half over his eyes, as if trying their best obstruct his vision for at least one second more. It wasn't even that all of his malevolence seemed to have been sucked out of him – the impulse to do evil, that little, musical voice that urged him on to change the world – was only a dormant force in his thoughts, taking a back seat to fright.

Rather, it was that Billy seemed to have aged in his sleep.

It was nothing drastic. The wrinkles in his forehead, which were ever visible when he squinted, were only a little more refined. Permanent creases surrounded his eyes in the shape of his goggles' frame, evidence that he had been wearing them for far too long. He himself hadn't changed that much, but the fact that he had changed at all threw a wave of foreign fear through his body. This was screwed up, even for him.

Exhaustion was replaced by confusion, and Billy staggered backwards. It was obvious that he had ingested too much Sodium Nitrate or something the night before, and was now on some sort of hallucinogenic trip. Deep breaths – one, two, in, out. He'd go back to sleep and wake up in a few hours with nothing more than a crazy headache, which was nothing new or groundbreaking at all.

That was the plan, but as Billy backed in to the room which he could now tell was distinctly different from his own, he bumped with surprising weight in to someone. He turned around to see Moist (on second thought, it had to have been Moist in the first place: only he could leave such a noticeably wet clump on the back of Billy's clothes simply by touching them), cowering under his gaze.

"M-Moist?" stuttered Billy, both relieved to see something familiar and tapped with unease by his expression.

"Doc! Er...Doctor. Sir..." Billy watched as Moist struggled through his words. "You were totally passed out last night, so I was just bringing you some coffee..." Moist held up the white mug which Billy assumed contained said coffee, and imagined that Moist chose a cup with a handle specifically so that he wouldn't lose his grip on it on accident.

"Umm... Thanks," replied billy, taking the slightly wet cup and wiping it on his lab coat. The wetness didn't show on the red as much as did on his normally white attire.

The two of them stood there for what seemed like forever. Both of them were staring the other down: Billy was looking at Moist expectantly, as if he could explain everything, and Moist was staring right in to Billy's eyes.

"Your goggles are off," he finally said.

Billy's hand (the one not holding the coffee, lest he spill warm liquid down the front of his shirt) unconsciously reached for his goggles, which were indeed not covering his eyes, and he fixed them so that they were no longer slipping down. "Yeah," he said.

"..." Moist looked at Billy as though he had grown a second head. Hell, Billy _felt_ like he had grown a second head, with the way Moist was staring at him. "You haven't taken those things off your eyes for two years now. At least, not that I've seen; you swore you'd never take them off, remember? It was all a part of your 'supervillain identity.'"

"...What?" Billy was certain that he had, in fact, taken his goggles off _at least_ once in the last two years. "But I just talked to you last night. We were talking about my ELE application!" Billy waved his hands around a bit, causing some of the coffee to splatter to the floor. He had been so caught in the moment that he had forgotten about the coffee entirely.

"...I think we need to talk, man."

#

Moist was strangely somber, which made Billy feel like an idiot. He really _didn't_ know what was going on.

"You don't remember anything, do you?" Moist had asked around the time that Billy's mouth was hanging open in awe at the beach-side mansion that he apparently lived in. It wasn't a very subtle secret base, for sure, but he had always figured that you didn't need your secret lab to be so secret when you got higher up on the sliding scales of villainy. Billy had worked on most of his inventions in his own basement, after all.

The two of them sat at a surprisingly small table, positioned next to the floor-to-ceiling windows in a manner than allowed all of the sunlight from the post-noon sun to shine down on them.

"I really have no clue what you're talking about, Moist," replied Billy in a voice that made him sound timid and frightened. _No, Billy, no! You're a visionary, not a frightened child! You're Dr. Horrible! Get a grip on yourself and focus!_ But he was still so shaken up that his words sounded totally helpless. Two years of his life were apparently gone: he was either in the future and had never experienced them, or he had forgotten them entirely, both of which were not options that he wanted to entertain. In fact, both them sounded absolutely ridiculous and shouldn't have passed through his mind at all. Or maybe he had switched lives with someone, a comic book plot gone horribly awry? (These kinds of things did seem to happen often in bouts of superhero fantasy...)

But he needed a way to explain what had happened. The world around him had completely changed over night, and Moist's mentioning of a two-year difference was probably more than a coincidence... He liked to believe that, as an evil scientist, he had to account for all possibilities when trying to explain a situation, even one as unusual as this. That , of course, was merely his own justification for entertaining theories of the impossible. Everything that was happening was completely impossible.

Moist had continued to give him the "are-you-crazy-and-need-some-medication?" look for quite a long period of time, but Billy's eyes and Billy's words rang with truth. Something he had not seen in a long time, apparently: when Moist decided that his boss was completely serious, his eyes and personality lit up like he was meeting a long lost friend.

"Wow... Just... Wow, Doc! It's been so long since we even had a conversation that I just..."

"Why? What happened?" Billy's voice had finally evened out to a normal pitch.

"Lots of things changed," replied Moist. He suddenly looked the two years older that he actually was. "_You_ changed. It wasn't about changing the world any more..."

Billy's mind wandered; this didn't feel like a joke or a dream or a bold delusion any more. The world was too vivid, his movements too precise, and his mind too focused to be anything but reality. Billy looked down at the crimson costume he had awoken in, blood red shade and matching black gloves the perfect image of the evil scientist he had always wanted to be. It was exactly what he imagined his costume to be when his ambitions hit it off in the future. Or was it the present, now?

He felt strange, sitting in one place while he wore those clothes. He was starting to feel like himself again, now that the shock of everything had worn thin, and his thoughts were straying yet again... Billy clenched his fists just a little, the material of his gloves tightening but making no noise, his body feeling the need to move, and Billy half-blinked; had the Freeze Ray ever been completed? Where was Captain Hammer? Did -

"I mean, ever since you got in to the E.L.E..."

Billy's thoughts crashed to a screeching halt. Whatever he had been thinking of before was lost, rendered insignificant. "The E.L.E.? The _Evil League of Evil_? They accepted my application?!" He had almost literally jumped up, his hands slamming against the table with enough force to cause Moist to jump in his seat.

"W-well, sort of..."

"'Sort of?'"

"Yeah... They took a look at your app, and you got in after they evaluated you, so -"

"Evaluated?" Billy's eyes glowed with excitement. He wanted to _know_. What fantastic scheme had he come up with? A deeper part of him bubbled with anticipation and pleasure. How had me made a difference? Inspired fear? _Changed the world?_

Moist was once again choosing his words carefully. "...Not supposed to talk about that..." he muttered, which thankfully went unheard. _He didn't know._ And Moist was worried, above all other things, that this strangely changed, strangely amnesiac version of his old boss and best friend would vanish if he said something wrong.

"You showed up Captain Hammer something good," Moist finally said. "hit him where it hurt. You're one of Bad Horse's favorites, now."

Billy's mind swirled with exhilaration, to the point that his body couldn't keep up with it. He slouched back in to his seat, fixing his goggles again, and laughed. It wasn't quite joyful, nor was it quite evil, but rather it seemed as if it were warring between the two, unsure of its own significance.

"Heh... So I really did it? The League...wow." Billy let out anticlimactically. But inside of him, happiness swirled inexplicably, almost tangible and almost bearing it own will, brimming with accomplishment. Two years, he could see now, would amount to so much. He'd get, or had gotten, everything he'd ever wanted.

"So...what do you wanna do now, Doc?" asked Moist suddenly. Billy, looked up, his goggles still stubbornly trying to slip down over his eyes, which they now half covered. Moist seemed to have been digging straight in to Billy's thoughts – he felt restless, confident.

"Let's," continued Moist, "plan a bank heist or something. Like old times. I'll try to keep hold on the bags this time."

Despite the fact that Billy didn't remember that particular instance, he agreed. The two of them stood up, and, as Moist went off to do...Moist things, Billy looked around at the evil lair's – _his_ evil lair's – impressive interior one more time. He had done it. Somehow, in the future or in some series of events he no longer remembered, he had done it. Captain Hammer was defeated. He was in the ranks of the League. _The League_. Everyone could finally see it. It was finally Dr. Horrible's turn to show the world. She could -

He stopped. She.

That was the reason, he remembered with a shock that felt foreignly like self-sickness. How could he had forgotten? Had he been so amazed by what the future held that he had completely cast aside why he had donned those goggles in the first place? He pushed them up so that both of his eyes were completely uncovered; why had he forgotten?

_But you have everything you ever wanted_, said something melodious in the back of his mind, from the same place where his greatest inspirations and darkest plans came from. _So it shouldn't matter_. Billy, deciding that he was already in no position to question his mental sanity regardless, promptly told his inner self to stuff it. He turned to Moist, who was returning with an armful of empty bags that, upon inspection, appeared to be made of a particularly grip-friendly material. He idly imagined that he had those bags just so that he wouldn't drop them in a most crucial instant, and then mentally shook himself for being so easily distracted.

"Here," said Moist to deaf ears. "I'm assuming you don't remember what you said to me last month about not being allowed to be seen with you on evil business, so..."

There were more important things to worry about, things that should have been foremost in his thoughts.

"Moist?"

"Yeah?"

"...Where's Penny?"

-

_(In the end, Dr. Horrible had gotten what he wanted: fame, power, change. Consequently, Billy lost everything.)_


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. Any similarities with the real world are purely coincidental. The author is in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise. No copyright infringement is intended.

Notes about this story can be found on my profile.

* * *

**Act II**

**Captain Hammer (Pathways and Shadows)**

-

-

_(What would you do if you could repeat a single day? If you could change a single event, and alter the outcomes of a thousand different tragedies? Would you rise to the challenge, as an good hero should? Or would you do nothing at all?)_

_-_

Captain Hammer awoke to his third Saturday in a row.

Now, this wasn't exactly a normal occurrence, but in this age of television and hour-long dramas, who could blame Captain Hammer for his lack of shock? The Groundhog Day Effect was, after all, something one saw in popular media all the time: a single day, repeated indefinitely until some disastrous event was avoided. Captain Hammer had, in fact, read several comic book issues on the subject – being a superhero meant being knowledgeable of his genre, even if he would rather be working out than reading.

And thus, Captain Hammer picked his fantastically muscular self up out of bed, slamming his fist on to his alarm clock so that he could hear the gears within it cracking as it was silenced. He stood up, stretched, and smiled at himself in the mirror as he got dressed.

He still couldn't figure out what he was supposed to do.

The day he was reliving was a day that he had considered to be perfect. There had been no crime – no great evil had been committed, no dastardly plot had been even mentioned, let alone defeated or left victorious. No resident had cried out despair. Nobody had, to his knowledge, cried out for their savior that day.

But regardless of his confusion, Captain Hammer put on his brightest smile as he left his house, a fantastic piece of architecture that, shaped like a hammer, of course, loomed over the city. During the afternoon, its shadow would cover three city blocks. As he stepped outside, the glare from the midmorning sun reflected in to his eyes. He squinted until he was far enough from the tower that the sunlight no longer glared upon his face, think all the while of, for the second time, the events that would, and _should_, transpire that day.

First, Captain Hammer would mull around the city until, upon reaching a particular crosswalk, he would help a poor, elderly specimen cross the street. After posing for photos to commemorate his dashing charms, he would then make haste to the Mayor's humble abode (not nearly as amazing and ultimately awesome as his own), and "convince" him to allow the Caring Hands Association the use of a particular building that would be, until Captain Hammer so kindly pointed out its significance, left alone or even slated for demolition. Then, he would go to the laundromat, pick up his totally-amazingly-hot-bookish girlfriend Penny, and the two of them would return to the Hammer Tower and have sex.

That last thing had been his favorite part.

#

The fourth saturday.

"Captain Hammer, are you feeling alright?" asked a small girl as he patrolled the city. She was a wide-eyed, youthful looking child, though her dirtied appearance, most likely the result of a few hours terrorizing some sandbox somewhere, made Captain Hammer all the more eager to hightail it out of the slums.

"Of course!" he said, flexing his muscles and putting on his most dazzling fake smile. This seemed to reassure the little girl, who smiled her most truthful smile, in juxtaposition to Captain Hammer's façade.

This was the fourth time he had seen it, and the second time he had even made contact with her. The first day - he first time he had lived through it, at least – he had ignored her completely, regarding her as only a speck in the dirt, something upon which great men like him spat or stepped with finality. Really, he found that his feelings hadn't changed, but now there was no way to avoid interaction.

She ran off, and Captain Hammer sighed with relief. He didn't like dealing with people other than the press, the mayor, Penny (oh beautiful, pale skin and delicate curves!), and his idiot of a nemesis. Somebody took a picture behind him, the flash of a camera pervading the edges of his vision, and Captain Hammer turned to pose; there was no need to let his loyal fans down.

#

The seventh saturday.

Already, the day was almost over, as if his sense of time degraded as each set of twenty-four hours passed by, now in more whirs than ticking moments. He and Penny (delightfully red-apple lips, that graceful smile...), just the two of them, walking hand in hand in to the Hammer Tower ,where a night of intrigue and passion awaited them... Though this was the seventh time it had happened, Captain Hammer found that he enjoyed it no less, even after a week of having to take Penny's hand, of opening the door and closing it behind them, as walking through all of his crime-fighting equipment and listening to his girlfriend's "ooh"s and "ahh"s.

The two of them ended up, after an hour of meaningless drabble (the _seventh hour_ of it, and thank God it was over), in the Hammer Bedroom. Penny sat down on the bed, intimidated slightly by the hammer-themed bedpost and the many, many awards that lined the walls. She looked so cute when she shivered.

Without waiting for any sort of consent from his guest, Captain Hammer sat down on the bed beside her, his bulk pressing down on the covers, and held Penny close to his chest.

"Well, now, shall we?" he said, and what he was implying was obvious. But then, something changed; Penny did something she had never done before.

She pushed away. Something had changed.

"I'm not sure if this is a good idea," she said. She was looking down, hands clenched, her features both bashful and firm. "It seems like we're going too fast."

Penny looked as though she was squirming in her seat, shifting uncomfortably as Captain Hammer leaned against her. It was different.

Something had changed.

Captain Hammer found himself split in to two very different trains of thought. One was excitement: it was different! Penny had never refused him before – she was far too enamored with his fantastic, heroic appeal to offer up any sort of refusal. Already a week's worth of this moment had passed by, and only now was Penny asserting her rights as a human being. The other part of him, the far more natural set of processes in his mind, was just slightly disappointed, and longing, and could only stare in to Penny's wholefully pure eyes...

He gave in to that instinct.

#

The twenty-fifth saturday.

Captain Hammer groaned, weariness apparent in every over-proportionate joint in his body. The medication he had taken hours ago, to stave off the absolutely horrid headache he had woken up with, was starting to wear off, and he felt the undeniable throb of restlessness and dull pain pull at the back left side of his head.

He was still missing something – he knew it, felt it somewhere in his heart that he could no longer ignore – but was unable to find it. Little things were changing, but by bit, but none of them could pull Captain Hammer in to tomorrow. In his head (while he wasn't gushing over his own amazingness or bathing in the praise of other – he enjoyed it even as the days repeated) he mulled over his small, small mental list of the things that had changed:

The most drastic change, of course, was that Penny was almost completely unwilling to comply with his advances. But that was a situation that, with proper wooing, was easily remedied...

Small events happened out of order, sometimes: the lady who he helped to cross the street would sometimes glance at him mistrustfully, and other times she would grasp his hand entirely in her will. Sometimes the photo-shoot went off without a hitch, and sometimes it was a disaster. Sometimes it was sunny outside, and sometimes the sky was bleakly overcast.

But it was always (and this frustrated Captain Hammer endlessly, maddeningly) the same date.

#

The forty-third saturday.

Or, at least, he thought it was – he often found himself losing count. For all Captain Hammer knew, it could be the fiftieth saturday, or the ninetieth saturday, or the thousandth saturday. It seemed that, through the constantly pervading feelings of frustration, he didn't care much what day it was, as long, tomorrow, it would be _over_. He had resorted even to, in order to see what single thing he needed to change, repeating each day in almost exactly the same manner as he did on the first. By replicating each event, he hoped to find the one thing that would thrust him in to tomorrow.

This saturday was one of a particularly fervent, negative sort. All things had turned to the negative – the woman seethed, the photos were a disaster, the armored car was robbed successfully, the sky drizzled on and off with rain, and all other manners of small catastrophes – and Captain Hammer found the world to be a much darker place in reflection of his own personal Hell. When he finally made it to sunday, he decided, he would personally destroy half the city in retribution for his trials.

But he was headed to the laundromat, now, where a single event that always occurred never failed to fill him with satisfaction. Penny would be there, smiling, radiant, and Captain Hammer would sweep her off her feet, and that poor excuse for a villain -

The doorbell made a faint "Ping!" as he entered, creating a firm and purposeful blockade between Dr. Horrible, dressed rather convincingly as a civilian, and any hopes for escape.

They exchanged pardons, Dr. Horrible refusing to look Captain Hammer in the eye, probably in order to hide the obvious, evil glint within them. In such simple clothes, Dr. Horrible almost looked human. But Captain Hammer knew that, as soon as he was alone, that mask would slip off and, donning his mediocre-at-best supervillain outfit, Dr. Horrible's malevolence would shine through his obviously faulty good intentions.

"Billy, this is Captain Hammer," said Penny, introducing them for what she believed was the first time. She was flustered, her delicate features pinkened like a freshly cut flower, though about what Captain Hammer had never been able to decipher.

Billy? "Oh! Billy!" exclaimed the Captain. He forgot so easily that Billy was the name Dr. Horrible used when masquerading as a functioning member of society. "The laundry buddy. Well, it is _very_ nice to meet you."

More pleasantries were exchanged. When Captain Hammer announced that the Caring Hands Homeless Shelter would indeed get their poor, decrepit building, Penny was ecstatic, as usual. She gave Captain Hammer a light peck on the cheek, an act which no longer held any sort of heavy significance, and ran off to complete her laundry before the two of them would walk off in to the now brightening sky.

Captain Hammer, seizing his moment, pulled Dr. Horrible close, as if to impart upon him some great secret. _I know that you have something to do with this._

"Well, it was sure nice to meet you...Doctor." Dr. Horrible's gaze hardened.

There was something wonderfully melodious about taunting the Doctor. It was a constant in all senses of the word: a constant whispering in his ears, a constant satisfaction at watching Dr. Horrible squirm, a constant pleasure when he walked out that door with Penny at his side, not once looking back. That singular feeling buzzed through the air like song, a melody to which he could almost hear the lyrics. _'Cause I believe there's good in everybody's heart..._ Captain Hammer, too busy with his own amusement, duitifully ignored the sound of Penny's voice in his memory.

"You got a little crush, don't you, Doc? Well, that's gonna make this hard to hear..."

Briefly, Captain Hammer noted the harshness of his words. Had he been so cruel before, the first time he had confronted the Doctor, or was he filled with extra malice just today. wanting so badly to vent is frustrations? Once again, Captain Hammer, pushed down any opposition to his actions, the churning in his gut that responded negatively to his enmity brutally forced down, though it was hardly even a whisper anymore.

"I'm gonna give Penny the night of her life, just because you want her...and I get what you want." Dr. Horrible was shaking in anger, now. Was that hatred in his eyes? Rage? Or was it that spark of evil, that darkness that Captain Hammer had always known, without a doubt, was there? "See, Penny's giving it up. She's giving it up _hard_. 'Cause she's with Captain Hammer – and these," he whispered, holding up his fists for good measure, "are not the hammer."

He spun on his heels, even making sure to explain himself in detail to the fuming villain, before Penny took his hand in hers and the two of them left the laundromat in bliss. Captain Hammer felt, despite all the torment of the last endless days, a brief moment of relief. Even if Penny struggled tonight, even if tomorrow was still saturday and things went wrong yet again, even if he still could not identify what to change to save him from this cycle, breaking little Billy-buddy always made him feel better.

He never noticed that Billy stood there, unmoving, as they left. He never noticed the ceasing of the Doctor's shaking, which was replaced by a calculated calm. He never noticed Dr. Horrible's frown turn to a grin that would probably make Bad Horse whinny with anticipation.

It's a brand new day...

-

_(They were blinded by selfishness, always acting out for their own motives alone, and it was in that manner that the tragic cycle of their little play continued indefinitely.)_


End file.
